By LAUREN NEWKIRK MAYNARD

“I still love what I do, because it’s at the core of what UB is and can continue to be—an international university with a diverse set of cultures and communities.”

Ellen Dussourd, Director

International Student and Scholar Services

A knot of Chinese engineering undergraduates pick up brochures
about renting off-campus apartments, while a Russian student
studies the world map on the wall and staff members conduct a tense
discussion about how to proceed with another student’s
immigration paperwork.

The copy machine hums and phones ring as people laugh, talk and
jostle each other in the narrow hallways. Navigating this sea of
activity is Ellen Dussourd, director of ISSS.

The ISSS walk-in service area in 210 Talbert Hall is a main
point of contact between UB and its 5,000-plus international
students. During peak times of the semester, the ISSS staff of four
international student advisers and four graduate assistants can
interact in one day with more than 250 students representing more
than 100 countries.

ISSS this week is hosting UB’s International
Education Week, part of an annual celebration of global
cultures sponsored by the U.S. departments of State and Education.
The schedule, which runs through tomorrow, includes a dizzying
array of multicultural activities and performances, including two
keynote events on the theme of “Arab Spring in Focus,”
as well as international student club performances, academic
lectures and career workshops.

In addition to planning and organizing IEW, Dussourd’s
office ensures UB’s compliance with immigration regulations
as they apply to international students, and handles related
processes and paperwork that dictate the students’ course
loads, as well as their employment, travel and vacation time. ISSS
also educates the students about immigration benefits for which
they are eligible, including a yearlong, off-campus work experience
included in their stay.

The office organizes International Student Orientation each
semester, and as many as 12 field trips each semester and during
the summer to give international students a taste of American
culture, whether that’s a peek at Niagara Falls, a hike in
Letchworth State Park, a cross-country skiing or snowshoeing trek,
or a trip to the Buffalo Philharmonic or a Sabres hockey game.

It doesn’t stop there. ISSS produces three weekly
e-newsletters and an annual calendar of customized workshops for
international students and employees, and UB departments, and is
heavily involved with safety, emergency and wellness programs
affecting international students.

The main goal of all this work, Dussourd says, is to help
UB’s international community deal with the inevitable
government red tape and bureaucratic challenges of attending a
major research university and living in a large U.S. city.

With her background in teaching English as a Second Language
(ESL), Dussourd has spent the past 13 years at UB unraveling the
complex “language” of U.S. immigration law. More than
95 percent of UB’s international students are on F-1 and J-1
visas. Students’ immigration status is affected by many
factors, including their academic standing, and ISSS is there to
ensure that they comply with U.S. immigration regulations and that
their immigration paperwork is in order. To do that, Dussourd and
her staff have developed a “triple-check system” to dot
all i’s and cross all t’s on students’
immigration paperwork.

“My staff is terrific—they have diverse aptitudes
that balance mine. We work hard to maintain a friendly environment
where there is also zero tolerance for error. Our goal is for our
international guests to focus on their academics and on enjoying
their stay here while also maintaining their immigration
status,” Dussourd says.

She is proud of UB’s leadership in working with the
federal government, which tightened many international travel and
visitation regulations after 9/11. UB was one of the first
universities to submit data via batch into the Student and Exchange
Visitor Information System, known as SEVIS, a national database of
the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that monitors
nonimmigrants while they are enrolled in school or in exchange
visitor programs.

For scholars, ISSS operates in a separate channel to provide
them with similar services, especially income tax assistance
through a series of online webcasts that are used by many other
universities.

The office works with many units across campus, including Campus
Living, the Office of Off-Campus Student Services, the
Undergraduate Academies, the English Language Institute, UBit;
Counseling and Wellness services, and Student Judicial Affairs.
Connecting ISSS activities with a variety of other student programs
is essential, Dussourd says.

Stephen Dunnett, vice provost for international education, adds
that the support services provided by ISSS are “critical to
UB’s success in recruiting and retaining a growing number of
international students.”

“We are indeed fortunate to have one of the most dedicated
and effective ISSS directors in the country,” Dunnett says.
“A highly committed internationalist, Ellen recognizes the
importance and contributions of our international students, and
works unstintingly on their behalf. She and her staff do all they
can to assist our international students and scholars to adjust to
life and study in the U.S., and ultimately succeed in their
programs.”

Hadar Borden, director of the Undergraduate Academies, says
it’s “an absolute pleasure” to work with
Dussourd. Borden’s office works with a similar purpose,
offering a Global Perspectives Academy to all undergraduate
students that incorporates international cultures into academic
opportunities and social activities. The academies and ISSS
co-sponsor UB’s Global
CINEMAspectives , a film series that runs throughout the
year.

“Encouraging students, faculty and staff to explore
cultures and topics from different perspectives is inherent to the
mission of the academies, making our collaboration a natural
fit,” notes Borden

Perspective and translation are important aspects of
Dussourd’s job. She has developed several workshops to help
staff and faculty better understand the needs of UB’s global
population, including tips on how to advise, teach, socialize with
and provide customer service to international students.

People from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds think
and act differently from each other, she notes. “What’s
appropriate and useful to a Chinese student can mean something
vastly different to, say, an Indian student.”

Being “lost in translation” can lead to some
interesting situations, some amusing and some serious. For example,
the Indian word for grade or level in school is
“standard” and “sessional” is a mid-term
exam. The word “paper” means “exam” and
“tuition” actually refers to an Indian “cram
school,” or private school, where students are tutored and
take extra classes.

And “mugging up?”

“That means cramming for a test,” Dussourd says with
a laugh, adding that foreign students often get confused by
American slang. When they first arrive at UB, she says, “they
often have no idea what ‘TBA’ or ‘rain
check’ or even ‘course credit’ mean.”

Social norms also can vary greatly among cultures, Dussourd
says. Individuals from one country may typically be “blunt
and to the point,” while those from another country may feel
offended by a direct question or demand. She recounts a time when a
student requested mediation to get out of her lease with her
landlord. Personal connections—knowing someone who knows
someone—is an assumed way of getting things done in certain
countries, she explains, where in the U.S., the process is more
bureaucratic and impersonal.

Before joining UB in 1999, Dussourd earned a bachelor’s
degree in French at Georgetown University and two master’s
degrees in teaching and international management. During her
30-plus-year career, she has lived and worked in France, Japan,
Cameroon, the former U.S.S.R. and Mauritania, and came to UB after
serving as program director for Indiana State University’s
Intensive English Program. She says she got her start in ESL
teaching during a stint with the Peace Corps in Cameroon, where she
taught English as a Foreign Language at a government high
school.

Her transition from program director of an ESL program serving
100 students to college administrator responsible for more than
5,000 international students hasn’t been easy, but Dussourd
maintains that “I still love what I do, because it’s at
the core of what UB is and can continue to be—an
international university with a diverse set of cultures and
communities.”

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